Sat 3:00 PM in Plaza III (Three) (1 hour)
“MUNDANE” SCIENCE FICTION (1593)
[Panelists: Gregory Frost (mod), Barbara Krasnoff, Allen Steele,
Margaret Riley, Steve Miller]
Science fiction can be set in the future without all of the
impossible tropes, such as time travel, faster than light travel,
psi powers and galactic empires. What are some examples, and what
goes into creating it

Thanks to our longtime readers and fans we’re finishing up the 25th Anniversary Year of the Liaden Universe® and what a grand year we’ve had. We’ve met and talked with many of you at conventions, the BEA, and on our Trade Secret book tour. Jethri’s adventures, like Theo’s, have brought round lots of commentary, and Trade Secret hit the Bookscan bestseller list at Number 6 — a real accomplishment in these days of movie and TV-tie-in domination of the Science Fiction bestseller lists.

One thing we’ve been surprised by is how many of our readers tell us they’ve been with us (or our characters) since close to the beginning. To help us celebrate Trade Secret and our 25th year of Liaden publication please share with us your first Liaden experience — and how many titles you’ve read since then ...

For January we’ve added a new story to the line-up over at Splinter Universe — you can find it there now. We plan to add a story each month as well as the occasional guest story as well. The new story, “The Rifle’s First Wife” is a novelette of just over 13000 words and will be online for a few months. If you’d like to support these expanded efforts, read the story, and find a donate link at the end.

Meanwhile, as things stand now Sharon will not be at Boskone the weekend between Valentine’s Day and President’s Day, but Steve will. Look for a Friends of Liad Breakfast, probably Saturday February 15 in one of the hotel restaurants. Steve had a full slate of program items, a reading, signing and kaffeeklatsch on schedule.

We’ve published a new Liaden Universe® story over at the Splinter Universe site — look for “Roving Gambler” along with other splinters and stories. We’ll be updating that site more regularly now — watch for some spoken word reprises of older (non-Liaden) Lee & Miller fiction starting soon. You can help support these efforts — you’ll see donation buttons on the stories and in the margins there.

Coming up this summer, Lee & Miller will be attending DetCon 1 — this years NASFIC or North American Science Fiction Convention. That’ll be in July, and we expect to have an evening Liaden party, autograph, have Friends of Liad breakfast, and read from works in progress — as well as be on panels and wander the wonders of the convention...

This year’s iteration of the world’s oldest ongoing SF convention will take place November 21 to 23, 2014 & will feature Steve Miller and Sharon Lee as Principal Speakers in Cherry Hill, NJ. Along with dozens of other well-known writers, artists, filkers, and fans they’ll bring lots of literary fun to the outskirts of Philadelphia the weekend before Thanksgiving. See you at Philcon 2014?